Floods shift Wabash River: New path at Mackey Bend

River cuts new path at Mackey Bend

Photograph by Keith Wamsley
Floodwaters moving down the Wabash River in June caused it to cut a new channel near its junction with the Ohio River in Posey County. This aerial photograph shows the new river route linking two portions of the Wabash's channel near Mackey Island, which can be seen on the right. The upper portion of the photograph is Mackey Bend, now a large island cut off from the rest of Point Township. The land on the left is in Illinois.

Photograph by Connie Thompson
Powerful, fast-moving floodwaters moved across parts of Point Township in Posey County with the force of whitewater rapids in June, eroding the Wabash River banks.

Photograph by Connie Thompson
Fast-moving waters flow through a new channel carved through Mackey Bend by the Wabash River in Posey County near its junction with the Ohio River. The relatively still waters of the original river can be seen at the top of the photograph. Many believe the new channel will become the river's regular course and the cut off bend will become an oxbow that will slowly fill in.

Photograph by Keith Wamsley
Floodwaters moving down the Wabash River in June caused it to cut a new channel near its junction with the Ohio River in Posey County. This aerial photograph show's dredging by the Corps of Engineers in the navigational channel of the Ohio River at the mouth of the Wabash River. The Corps was removing the sediment that flowed into the Ohio because of the floodwaters. The Corps did the dredging from June 27 to July 2.

The Wabash River is still the longest stretch of free-flowing river in the Eastern United States, but in June it became a little shorter.

The sheer volume and force of record floodwaters that were racing down the river caused it to cut a new channel across a section of Posey County known as Mackey Bend, leaving an oxbow of stiller waters that may or may not eventually fill in with silt and debris.

Mark Poshon, property manager at the state's nearby Hovey Lake Fish and Wildlife Area, said it may take several more flood events before the new channel is large enough to qualify as the river's main course.

"Over time rivers meander, and the Wabash River plain is probably 30 or 40 miles wide," he said.

"Everybody knew eventually it was going to cut these loops off, it was just a matter of time. It's just that it didn't happen where everybody thought it would, which just goes to show you nature knows what it is doing."

Either way, the new channel is likely to have an effect on currents in the Wabash and possibly the Ohio River, Poshon said, noting that silt from the Wabash caused the Ohio to be closed for navigation between Mount Vernon, Ind., and Old Shawneetown, Ill., for several days in June.

The new Wabash channel has been creating a large island that has been variously estimated at between 1,700 and 2,700 acres.

The newly carved channel has cut several farmers off from some of their cropland.

"I'm saying at least 2,000 acres, but that is just what is cut off, not what is lost. You have to take into account the land that was taken by this, too," said Larry Robb, Posey County's Emergency Management Agency director.

"That's a lot of land. This will be a big financial loss for the farmers."

He estimates the river has shortened its course by at least six miles.

Calling it a devastating situation, U.S. Rep. Brad Ellsworth pledged Saturday to help the roughly one dozen farmers whose cropland has been isolated by the river's changing course.

"It was kind of history in the making, something you have to see," Ellsworth, D-Evansville, said after a two-hour tour of the area.

"We stood and watched the bank fall into the river," said Ellsworth, who was accompanied by a group of farmers who no longer have access to the land, local officials and representatives from the Natural Resources Conservation Service.

He said while the federal government has programs in place to take the land out of production and reimburse the farmers "who have lost millions because this was very productive farmland," it's his job to make sure the funding is handled in a timely manner.

"I'm going back to Washington on Monday to make sure the funds are available, to make sure that (response) is timely and efficient and that these folks know what's going to happen and can plan," said Ellsworth. "I'll do anything I can to help if there are any roadblocks."

He complimented the NCRS representatives who already are working with farmers on the application process.

Robb said he has requested state officials conduct an aerial assessment of the area so he can get a better idea of its scope.

"We have to worry now about potential erosion upstream. It will probably run a lot faster now that it is shorter. A lot of people are coming to look at it, so we also have to worry about people getting too close. The ground is still unstable, and it is still eroding," Robb said.

Partly deflected off Mackey Island in the original channel, across from the newly cut off bend, the river is continuing to flow through its shortcut at a fast pace.

A lone pipe from a capped-off oil well juts up like a pole in the middle of the shortcut, evidence of the land that was once there.

"I could hear the roar of the water from our farm two miles away," said Ed Yeida, "and I knew nothing was good. It's amazing."

Although Yeida's land is on the accessible side of the new channel, he estimated the flooding still will have cost him $10,000 or more.

"You used to be able to walk across it," said Mary Price, an area resident.

Price, who grew up and still lives in Point Township along with her sister Connie Thompson and brother Glenn Yeida, said the amount of water flowing across the area and tumbling into the Ohio River, which had a lower water level, was awesome to behold.

She said area residents have long expected such a cut to happen but were shocked that it happened where it did, at a location in which the river had not yet made serious inroads. In fact, the river already had been slowly eroding a channel farther west of where it broke through in June.

Additionally, the June floodwaters created several more deep fingers of erosion that did not go all the way through.

The rising Wabash crested at 22.45 feet — 7.45 feet above flood stage — at New Harmony, Ind., on June 15, according to the National Weather Service at Paducah, Ky. Meanwhile the Ohio River at the J.T. Myers Lock & Dam already had crested at 33.97 feet on June 10 — still 3 feet below flood stage there — and was receding.

"The Ohio's crest had already gone by," said hydrologist Mary Lamm.

Water from the Wabash poured into the Ohio without regard for either's channel, dropping down into the larger river like a miniature waterfall along the river banks.

"The river goes where it is going to go. It has changed over the years," said Jon Neufelder, a Purdue University agricultural extension agent in Posey County.